Salnave Philippe-Auguste was born in Saint-Marc, Haiti in 1908 and died in the 1990s. A self-educated lawyer, he did not begin to paint until he was fifty years old in 1958. In 1960 he joined the Centre d'Art and created in his art a personal universe where animals from Africa and human beings lived together in a fantastic countryside, representing a version of Haiti's ecological "paradise lost."

The artist employs vivid colors and makes striking use of flat surface textures. His paintings are dominated by the female figure, often with winged female nudes. The painting here, with a single fantastic tree, is unusual in this regard.

This artist is an "old master" of Haitian painting, whose art has been sought after by collectors for many decades.